Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the State Land Inventory topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Panel debates adding state land to H.50 inventory for affordable-housing potential
Summary
Lawmakers and the commissioner of Buildings and General Services debated amendments to H.50 that would require the state to include land as well as buildings in the official inventory for identifying sites suitable for affordable housing, with questions about scope, frequency and who must supply the data.
The House Committee on Corrections & Institutions on Feb. 27 heard testimony on H.50, a bill to create an inventory of state-owned property to identify parcels and buildings that might be suitable for affordable housing development. Commissioner Wanda Manoli of the Department of Buildings and General Services offered a counterproposal that would add land to the existing “space book” inventory and clarify what information agencies must provide.
Committee members framed the debate as largely procedural: who must collect and update the list, which state agencies must respond, and how frequently the legislature would receive the information. Commissioner Manoli said the inventory already exists for buildings and that adding land to the statutory inventory is principally a data-collection task. “But I think what's most important in what we're talking about is first you want the inventory. You need to have the inventory,” Manoli told the committee, arguing that a consolidated, usable dataset is the necessary first step before any development process is started.
The commissioner described her office's annual "space book," which currently documents building square footage, occupancy and vacancy, and said BGS has restarted work to gather utilization data (badging, walkthroughs and occupancy measures) and could expand the form to report land holdings historically collected in earlier editions of the space book. Manoli proposed amending Title 29, section 1‑65 to require that agencies forward, in a prescribed format, information on buildings and land — including whether a building or parcel is vacant or “not needed for state purposes” — and to include that material in the space book.
Lawmakers pressed three main issues: (1) whether the inventory should be limited to land parcels with existing infrastructure (water, sewer, electric and transit access); (2) whether vacancy should be reported as a binary yes/no or as a percentage/utilization metric; and (3) how to ensure the data collection continues across administrations. Representative Connor, who has sponsored versions of H.50, said the value of the bill is to create an inventory across state agencies so developers and local leaders can see what is available. “If we have that inventory, then that could be the spark to have developers or folks really see what is available,” Connor said.
Committee members and the commissioner agreed on the central goal — assembling a single, searchable inventory of buildings and parcels — but differed on details. Several lawmakers asked that the statutory language remove or tighten a clause that conditions reporting on the commissioner "requesting" information, arguing that language could make biennial collection optional if a future commissioner does not issue requests. Manoli said the space book is already produced annually and that her amendment simply restores a prior practice of collecting land holdings from other agencies and putting that information into the space book format for the legislature to review.
On reporting cadence and format, a proposed amendment circulated during the hearing would direct the secretary of administration, in consultation with BGS, the Agency of Natural Resources and the Agency of Transportation, to identify state land, buildings and parking lots suitable for conversion to affordable housing and to report back by Feb. 1 of each odd-numbered year. Committee members asked staff and counsel to craft precise statutory language to: require (not simply permit) submission of inventories from all agencies, define what fields must be included in the electronic form, and clarify whether vacancy should be reported as a percentage and whether the inventory should exclude parcels with conservation easements or other legal restrictions.
No vote was taken. Committee leaders asked the bill sponsor and committee counsel to work with Commissioner Manoli and agency staff to produce a consolidated draft for the committee’s next meeting.
Next steps: committee members asked staff and counsel to produce a consolidated draft that (1) adds land to the Title 29 inventory; (2) specifies required fields and a delivery schedule for the report; and (3) clarifies the extent to which the inventory will filter parcels with legal restrictions or active agency plans before they are listed as available for housing.
